Nearly all students can keep the names of two letters in their short-term memory during the exercise. You'll see how this ability can be used to our advantage to lock information into the long-term "permanent" memory. We call this back and forth between two pieces of information Ping-Pong. Whatever you call it, it is an immensely powerful tool for accelerating the rate at which young (or non-English speaking) students can permanently memorize (learn) the alphabet letters. The increased repetition of only small amounts of information makes the magic happen by also stimulating brain areas involved in long-term memory retention. The picture above shows our three line Ping-Pong activity. We also have a one line Ping-Pong activity that contains 30 letters and reviews previous letters as well (a little more challenging).

The PingPong input page allows you to choose column or row format - font type - font size and spacing. Tape to the top of your student's desk as a powerful learning tool or give copies to parents for additional help at home.

After coloring the specific letter on the worksheet, students are then asked to count the number of letters they colored and then write the letter in the space at the bottom of the page (a dot is shown on each letter to show proper starting point). As you can see - no frustration here, just rapid non-stressful learning with a small challenge to keep things interesting.

The teacher begins by saying the picture name slowly - then asking - "Do you hear the "buh" sound at the beginning or end of the word?" - again saying the picture name slowly. If the sound is heard at the beginning of the word, students circle the "left" letter. If the sound is heard at the end of the word - they circle the right letter. This strongly reinforces the phonemic awareness skill of beginning and ending sounds. Students then take this information to simply find the correct word that contains the beginning or ending letter they just chose and writes the word in the space provided. Easy as pie! Once the teacher believes students have a grasp of the concept, students should then try the activity on their own without the teacher.

Before passing out the worksheet, place a pile of many different colored crayons in the middle of the table making sure there are ample crayons for the color that is needed in the activity. Since you are asking questions - there is the "fun" of finding the correct answer as you slowly progress through the activity.

Students circle the letter for the beginning sound - then the middle sound - and the letter for the final sound. Available in many different vowel sound categories including short vowels - long vowels - digraphs (ai - ee - oa - etc) and r-controlled vowels (ar - er - ir - ur - or). The activities should be repeated often to insure mastery of letters, sounds and skills taught.. Also, our Mr. Ed Phonics Tutor is basically the same activity but is done on a computer or phone and includes talking cartoon characters to assist.

Here's how it works... Mr. Ed uses 10 common three-letter nouns to teach the letter names and sounds made by those letters. He begins by explaining to your student what to do and then says the name of the first noun. Mr. Ed then asks the student to click on a letter in column 1 that makes the sound at the beginning of the word (teaching phonemic awareness as well). If the answer is correct, Mr. Ed gives a good-job comment and moves to the next letter/sound. If incorrect, a cartoon video immediately begins that teaches the correct answer. In other words, students can only advance when correct answers are chosen. This is known as immediate feedback and results in greatly accelerated learning. Because our cartoon characters correct and teach after every mistake - this makes for a powerful tutoring activity that will keep students involved for 20-30 minutes without needing any teacher assistance. Isn't that nice! Also included is a HELP button, so even before picking their letter answer, the can be told the sounds of the letters in that column, thereby, greatly increasing the likelihood of a correct choice. Not only is Mr. Ed the goto strategy for students behind in consonant sounds, but is absolutely a lifesaver for use with non-English speaking students.

Simply have a student sit next to you at the computer and ask them say the letters or sounds on the page. Click the button below the letter to score as correct (1), hesitation (2) or error (3).
The program then automatically makes a page showing all letters and sounds mastered and not mastered. As a bonus, it even makes a special row of practice letters you tape to the top of the students desk. The full version of this powerful program is available in our new Premier HandwritingPractice program.